Three hundred years ago, the Earth split and the sky trembled. And then the monsters came.
The island of Lowynn is cursed. The Veil between worlds has torn, and now, monsters come with vengeance. They can only be placated by the blood of sorcerers...
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It was a lovely evening, until the screaming started.
Lady Ciara's modest, close-lipped smile had soon given away to something free and wild. She had laughed with abandon, nose crinkling with mirth. It was the smile of a woman irritatingly overjoyed with the shrill music and the overly complicated dances. It was the smile that let him feel ordinary, for just a moment.
There had been a slight uncertainty to her steps, and fear that she hadn't managed to hide behind her eyes. But who did not tremble in his presence? Astonishingly, Lady Ciara's fear had not stopped her from approaching. Noble girls were always drunk off the smallest rebellions.
But her laughter was a simple pleasure not meant for someone like him. The moment they touched, everything changed.
Where there was nothing but silence a moment before, she became suddenly deafening. The song in his veins buzzed and flared until it could only mean one thing. Magic. Powerful magic.
The tangled threads of the moment wove together slowly. "What are you?" the Skaara asked, surprisingly frightened.
Instead of answering, the girl opened her mouth, and an ear-shattering scream burst forth.
For a heartbeat, her cries mingled with the symphony of the ballroom. Somewhere, a voice still thundered a bawdy song. It took a moment for the jaunty music of the fiddle to stop, for the laughter to freeze.
In that moment, he began to run, feet thunderous. He nearly collided with a confused couple who were craning their necks for a view.
And then, he heard the hollow sound of a falling body, and the ballroom erupted into chaos. Amongst the menagerie of fabrics, it only took a moment to find the black-clad figure in flight.
"Ciara! Ciara, baby! Oh gods. Oh sweetheart," a woman wailed.
And in the wake of her sobs, the Skaara kept running. This was what he did; fled with misery trailing in his wake. The Skaara had never seen magic erupt from a body with such violence, as if the power was a living entity crawling its way out of her skin.
The Skaara did not know if she would ever wake from the stone where she lay in a dead faint. He did not know if the desperate sobs of the girl's mother would ever cease as she cradled her daughter to her chest, oblivious to the maelstrom around them.
It does not matter. It cannot matter.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and the clang of unsheathed swords shook the ballroom. Above the chaos, he could hear the General shouting. "Fortify the castle! Don't let him escape! I want his head!"
Shite. The Skaara instinctively reached for his weapon, but his hand found only air. This was why he wasn't fond of parties. The Skaara was told that weapons were forbidden at Byrne Manor, and the guards had searched him thoroughly before he was allowed to enter.
